1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to electronic mail methods and systems and more particularly to electronic mail methods and systems using associated audio and visual techniques.
2. Background Information
Over the past decade, the use of electronic mail (email) has become a ubiquitous form of communication. Email has become among the primary methods of communications used in both business and social settings. Some of the advantages of communication by email are the ability to transmit messages instantly, the ability to transmit graphics, the ability to easily send messages to a large number of recipients, etc. Because of these (and other) advantages, transmitting messages by email is more efficient than other types of communication modes, such as telephone, facsimile, and the like.
Nevertheless, transmitting messages by email limits a sender's ability to convey emotions that may be associated with a message. For example, when sending a message, senders may wish to convey that they are angry, sad, happy, etc. Because the content transmitted by email is usually in a text format, it is difficult for a sender to convey emotions along with a message. Of course, certain punctuation (such as an exclamation point) or an emoticon may aid in conveying a sender's emotion, but the value of using these symbols is limited. For example, it is difficult to use symbols to convey humor, impatience, urgency, empathy, etc.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,064,383 to Skelley entitled “Method And System For Selecting An Emotional Prosody For A Graphical Character” is directed to a user interface element which enables a user to select an appearance for a character that corresponds with an emotion and an emotional intensity. Nevertheless, Skelley and the other existing prior art do not permit a full range of capability of expressing senses or emotions associated with a message transmitted over a network. For example, users are typically limited to a fixed number of characters, and are unable to easily display a likeness that resembles the user in a lifelike manner (with respect to audio and visual aspects) when sending such messages. Moreover, users cannot easily enter and choose among message content formats, be it text-based, audio, visual, etc., particularly with respect to the user's own likeness. Further, because transmitting messages by email has become so ubiquitous, it is desirable to have the ability to prepare such messages using a variety of devices and input techniques. Therefore, there is the need to devise a method and system in which a user can easily compose an email message with the ability to associate one or more multimedia components related to the message content. Additionally, there is the need to devise such a method and system wherein the user is not restricted to specific character choices, emotional displays, message formats or limited inputting techniques.